THL Reference Overview

Reference is the equivalent of a reference room in a traditional library, where users can find bibliographical references, consult dictionaries, and so forth. It contains standard reference resources including bibliographies, encyclopedias, dictionaries (including a place dictionary), web links to other digital resources, timelines, and rosters of contemporary people and organizations involved in the field. The reference resources will be fully integrated with the collections, so that users at any point within the library can look up a term, person, place or movement.

All reference resources incorporate diverse media and allow for contributions at both the extremely granular and extremely detailed levels. In addition, each resource is searchable by multiple criteria. The resources are all collaboratively built by international teams of scholars over the Web and are continuously updated and expanded. Thus each area – dictionaries, bibliographies, and so forth – consists of multiple components and projects managed by different scholars and librarians.